y divided. Your Liberal, as a rule, was a
Frenchman, and your Conservative a German. George Meredith and John
Morley sang the praises of France, Coleridge and Carlyle would have us
learn from Germany. Now for many years the die is cast. We shall face
the settlement and the dangers of the future side by side with France.

This becomes, then, one of the fixed points in our orientation. History
and geography both dictate it. Just as in the building of our fatherland
and its attendant sentiments, the process is not a purely logical one,
but comes to its completion by most irregular courses, with all sorts of
bypaths due to the odd configuration of our nature and the world we live
in, so in widening out from patriotism to humanity we have to follow a
line given, for the most part, by external facts. The French as our
nearest neighbours have always had a special interest for us. They, like
ourselves, have inherited a mixed race and a mixed civilization, partly
Teutonic, partly Celtic, partly Roman, but with elements variously
combined. To us a more predominantly Teutonic stock and an insular
position have given a more independent and unique character, history,
and constitution. France, as being continental and more central, was
also more completely Romanized, and has at all periods of her history
been more in touch with the general stream of thought than ourselves.
Often she has led it, always she has reflected it more quickly and
perfectly. Our traditional rivalry has been a chivalrous one, marked by
many episodes of real admiration and close friendship. To Elizabeth, to
Cromwell, to the Crusaders of the twelfth and the philosophers of the
eighteenth century, France and England seemed as naturally allied as
they are now in repelling a common aggression on their homes and
liberty. But for the future the strongest links will be the two great
common ideals, self-government and individual freedom at home, and the
community of free peoples abroad. In the practical democracy already
realized at home, and in the ideal of a humanity built up of such
self-governing and co-operating states, France and England stand for the
unity of western civilization in the sense in which it has been traced
in this volume, the only sense which makes it worth the sacrifice of
wealth and toil and life.

ERRATUM.

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_Marvin: The Unity of Western Civilization_.